


Musical Imagery Really Fucks with the Schedule

by LegacyWorks



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Musical Hallucinations, Neurodivergent Tony Stark, Neurodiversity, Song Lyrics, Tony Stark-centric, i wrote this because i couldn't handle listening to the music playing constantly in my head, musical imagery, song fic except it's not actually, this is my comfort character and I can project on them if I want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:14:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29384715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LegacyWorks/pseuds/LegacyWorks
Summary: Is screaming an option? It should be an option. Maybe that'll drown out the music insessently playing on repeat or changing without any god damn reason to.
Relationships: Harley Keener & Tony Stark
Kudos: 4





	Musical Imagery Really Fucks with the Schedule

**Author's Note:**

> Am I writing an entire fic just to project onto a character about my physical oddity? Yes. Is that what most of you guys do except with mental things? Yes. So I don’t feel bad. Have fun getting an idea about what musical hallucinations are. It sucks. 
> 
> For everyone that actually has these, I'm so sorry. Come suffer with me, and hopefully the songs don't start playing in your head all over again.

_Am I a monsteeeer from the start?_

_How did I ~~~~... frozen heart?_

_Bringing des~~~~ to the ~~~_

_Causing a war that I never meant to wage!_

_Hmmmhmhm, in a cage._

Tony groans as the flashing grey and red plays across his open eyes. He opens the gleaming white door in front of him, ignoring the sights that aren’t actually there. Sure, the art was pretty, but that doesn’t mean it needs to keep playing when he has work to do. He’s got things to make! Studies to read! Bruce’s newest article came out, this time about teratogens and how radiation in small doses from alien tech that’s been incorporated into everyday items is affecting the fetus. It’s important! It’s interesting!

_Wash the shame down with another drink,_

_I wanna get high I ~~~~~~ overthink,_

_My body’s shakin’ from the way you’re talkin’_

_My heart is ~~~~ but there’s no use cryin’_

Fuck the song changed. Lucky him, it’s not one he remembers hearing. So he doesn’t actually know the lyrics no matter what his brain keeps trying to fill in. That… definitely doesn’t make it better. Doesn’t make it worse, either.

“Friday, play something.” He rubs his eyes, trying to ease at least some of the frustration. It’s a bad day. One filled with changing lyrics, mashed up tunes, and more work than he can handle with his screaming mind that refuses to focus.

“Understood, Boss. How about Moneytalks?”

“Perfect.”

 **Tailored suits, chauffeured cars** starts playing through the speakers and Tony relaxes. The other sounds start to die down, though not completely. Like he said, it’s a bad day.

“Up a bit, Fri.” With the annoying songs pleasantly drowned out by AC/DC, Tony can finally focus on Bruce’s study.

It takes about 15 minutes of reading through the article before he reaches the supplemental material. Thankfully, Bruce has been talking about this on and off for the past two and a half years, so Tony just needed a bit of catch up instead of working from the ground to reach the stars, which is so obviously where anything and everything Bruce works on deserves to be. Though, the stars might be a bit too close to earth. 

Brucie’s just that smart.

There wasn’t anything obvious with the change, from what the paper said. For some reason there were more girls being born than previous years, but that could just be coincidence. Not that Bruce stated that in the paper - he suggested that there’s an increase in miscarriages in the first two weeks of pregnancy, something about the male fetus being more susceptible during that time? 

Brucie’s already working on gathering data with older children to find any differences, but it’s a slow process. People have to sign up, and then there’s the testing, and all the extra precautions to make sure the children are safe and taken care of despite it being less than an hour process for testing. And of course, most parents don’t care to let their child be studied. Some of the ones that were in the previous study agreed, but not all of them. 

“Hey, old man,” Harley says, walking in like the obtrusive, obstinate boy he is. “What are you doing?” Without really glancing at what Tony’s reading - he’d be fawning over it too, if he knew Bruce wrote it - he made his dumb teenager comment. “Ew, reading. C’mon, you’re better than that.” 

“Shut it,” Tony replies, already shifting through the next pages. Some of the ultrasounds were fascinating. It’s not Tony’s area and he doesn’t make a habit of staring at fetuses, but they just look so _weird_.

“Oh, gross.” Harley is, of course, looking over his shoulder at the small reptilian _thing_ growing inside a human person’s uterus. How it ever turns into a baby is part of the squishy sciences that Tony prefers to avoid.

“It’s the miracle of life, show some respect.” Tony swats at the brat’s face, barely missing as Harley moves backward and away from his shoulder.

“No.”

“Ungrateful. I’m telling your mother.”

“Do it, she’ll agree with me.” He’s grinning his impish grin, and yeah, sure. She wouldn’t really care, but it’s not like Tony has to admit that to a literal child.

“Fine, then tell Brucie!”

“No! He’ll look at me with those… those eyes!” Harley gestures frantically and then shudders. “I can’t. You tell him!” Tony lets out an afronted sound. He would never! Not to dear Brucie, he’s sensitive.

“Never.”

“Fine.” 

They look at each other for a moment. It’s an (un)comfortable (almost) silence before the child terror breaks it.

“You have shit taste in music.”

“And you have no class!” AC/DC keeps blaring in the background, now playing Rock N Roll Train.

Maybe he should change it.

“Friday, can you turn it down? I don’t know about the old man, but I like being able to hear myself think.” Ha, jokes on him! That’s what Tony’s trying to drown out. “Or being able to hear in general. Really, how are your walls so thick? They’re made of freaking glass!”

Not glass, and far better at sound proofing than anything a music room has.

“What? I can’t have people running in here every time something makes a bit too much noise! It’s already bad enough when they notice the smoke!”

“Yeah yeah, you’re a walking disaster that can’t stop things from exploding, we know!”

“I’ll have you know I’m a beautiful disaster that can fly, and I happen to like explosions.”

_I believe I can fly~_

_I believe I can touch the sky._

Fuck. Time to play the ‘what was worse’ game. This or whatever the fuck was playing before.

_I believe I can soooooar,_

_I see me running ~~~~~ doooor_

Nope, this is worse. This is so much worse.

“I hate you.”

“Wait, why? I mean, good, but also, wait why?” Asshole. Why did he take in this brat again? Who thought it was a good idea? (Him, but that isn’t the point).

Whatever, there’s still work. And if he can’t read, at least he can think. And engineer. Or do something.

Peter wanted to use BARF to play video games… that could work. There’s probably a way to make the process cheaper, too, so that people can actually afford the damn thing. And if it’s sold as a gaming console the price can go down even further, so people who actually need it will be able to get it. And Tony won’t even have to deal with the politics and investors if the market takes care of that for him!

Genius!

“Quit inflating your ego,” Harley calls out from the other side of the room, like the brat he is.

“Shut up.”

Neck deep in code, by which he means running and re-running the program to figure out if he deleted all the unnecessary periods and put in the spaces and other _fun_ things like that, Tony notices something.

He’s moving. The way people bob their heads to the rhythm. Except he doesn’t want to because moving is distracting and it takes his eyes away from the thousands of lines that he’s scrolling over and he has to _keep going back to the beginning_ because he misses the entire thing and none of the lines actually make it into his brain because _fuck_ if _I believe I can flyyyy~_ isn’t the most distracting thing.

He sighs.

“Friday, turn up the sound a bit?” She does, but only barely. Still in decent range for Harley’s hearing, but nowhere close to loud enough to deal with this incessant song. 

At least it resets the song in his head.

**I break tradition,**

**Sometimes my tries… are outside the lines.**

**We’ve been con-di-tioned to not make mistakes~**

**But I can’t live that way!**

Better. Maybe. Honestly it’s hard to tell sometimes, but we’ll see how long this dang song sticks. 

The next couple of songs cycle through without being too distracting, even if the faint tune from Unwritten is still following the melodies, ready to reach out and grab him, pushing him back under the current of notes.

It’s fine.

Until it's not because Beyonce hits him like a brick, no transitions, no nothing to warn him that the tune was about to change and drown out everything else around him. And nothing that played on the speakers that should have shifted the song. If anything, Bohemian Rhapsody should have played next. But no, it didn’t. Because his brain sucks.

_To every ~~~ your body natural,_

_Same skin that was broken be the same ~~~~~_

_Most things out of focus, ~~_

“Yeah, most things _are_ out of focus, fuck.”

“You’re actin’ crazy again, old man.”

“Shut up.” Giving up for the day, since his brain has decided to be absolutely useless and _won’t shut up with the freaking songs,_ Tony does the responsible thing and takes a break to get food. He’s useless anyway, might as well stop Bruce and Pepper from getting on his case.

Tapping his finger tips against the back of his neck, and ignoring that the trick isn’t working and the sounds just keep playing in his head, Tony gets off his elevator and heads to the general kitchen. Some of the R&D folks probably have offerings or something for him.

Yeah. They do that sometimes.

It’s sweet, if a little creepy.

He manages to find a container of mac and cheese with the sticky note ‘to our Lord and Savior you know who.’ They put some broccoli in it, for some god damn reason, but he admits that it tastes pretty good. Maybe he can make that for Bruce at some point, get the man to stop complaining about the lack of rabbit food.

Cheese covered rabbit food is much, much better than an (ugh) salad.

Disgrace to the entire category of food.

_Calling it quits I don’t wanna admit,_

_That I’m, that I’m_

_Stuck in the cracks and I’m going down understaaaanding and warm!_

Hold up. No. That’s not. How did that even happen? Their tunes aren’t the same? The lyrics are completely different!

But at least Tony knows this song. He doesn’t want to, but Peter is absolutely obsessed with this Sanpers guy and just keeps. Showing. Videos.

It’s ridiculous. 

What’s more ridiculous is how much he likes this damn music video. One time on the big screen was enough. Three was excessive. Ten? Just insane, abnormal, obsessive and maybe a little creepy.

_Pleeeease give us mooooore than this bullshit._

_Yeah that’s a bit ~~~~~_

_Makes me say ~~~~~~_

Yum. Think about the mac. It’s good. Even if there’s the weird green leafy stuff. Don’t listen to the damn song. There must be something to knock it out…. What even are these lyrics?

Tony makes the mistake (big, big, big mistake) of actually listening to the song cycling around his head on loop. Right once he does the video comes into his head and just.

God dammit.

_I’m Peter Pan-sexual,_

_No you’re twinkerbell!_

Fuck.

It’s probably not how the actual music video goes, but he can just see the singer- or. One of them. Standing in the royal looking halls and just. Dancing? But cutely and very clearly without knowing what he’s doing.

The counter in front of him is nice and clear, his bowl of offerings set to the side, and perfect for just _thunk_ slamming his head down. It’s so loud. The sounds just aren’t stopping.

One of his worshipp- *ahem* employees stare at him. When did she get here?

Tony just points at his brain and rolls his eyes. She does a thing with her mouth and nods. Ah, she thinks she understands. But she doesn’t. Tony bets she doesn’t have stupid music playing in her head all the freaking time, distracting from work and conversations and making it even more difficult to pay attention to what others are saying or doing because it’s _all consuming_ and there is only the music left.

Okay, so a tad dramatic, but. His point stands.

“With footwork so thrilling,

“I slay without killing.” 

Tony gives up. If it wants to be so loud in his freaking brain, everyone else can suffer through it too. And sure, maybe his singing is worse than the song is, but still. Torture for everyone. Group torture. Sympathy torture? Well. Something.

His brain isn’t working anyway, and this isn’t his job.

His job is downstairs in his lab where he should be able to focus except the music that _actually exists outside his head_ isn’t loud enough to drown out the music _in_ his head.

“Let’s add rainbow sprinkles,

“And a shot of tequila.”

Okay, so the lyrics both suck and are actually pretty good. He… actually forgot about most of this song, but Peter must like it for a reason. That kid has bad taste in movies, but his music isn’t terrible.

_A gay guy who’s ~~~ will fit clean on a ~~~~~_

If only he could remember the rest of them. They were probably decent.

“What are you singing,” asks Bruce, looking amused. Traitor. Calling him out on his attempt at sharing the suffering. Tony pouts.

“Nothing.” The chuckle he gets in response means nothing.

The damn song is still playing, though, and Bruce did ask…

“A whole new woooorld,” he starts out softly. “A ~dazling place you ~~~~~” most of it’s muttered under his breath because he can’t remember the freaking lyrics, but it’s not his fault. It’s Peter’s (probably) for getting the dang thing in his head. 

“I’d be so gay up here,

“It’s crystal queeeer,” oh, word play.

_Bless my hole, twerking on a pole -_

What the -

“Fuck!”

“Nothing, huh?” Tony glares at Bruce. It was a freaking child who sang that line!

Well. Maybe not a child. But Tony’s older than the kid, so that makes him a child!

He tells the Harley in his head to shut up. Just in case the kid is able to overhear after spontaneously acquiring telepathy and learning how to use it without telling Tony.

Sounds like something the brat would do.

Tony flops onto the couch, done with the world. 

_I’m Peter Pan-sexual._

_No you’re twinkerbell!_

Uuuuuuuuuugh. 

By the time Peter walks into the room from wherever he went that afternoon, Tony’s a mess on the couch. He already gave up reading, and watching TV, and trying to design _anything_ that takes more than zero brain cells. Cooking was out of the options since he already ate, and no one ate his cooking anyway. Talking with Bruce could only last for so long. The guy’s busy, and Tony kept losing track of what they were talking about because _something_ was taking up all of his mental capacity.

“This is your fault,” he says pointedly, staring Peter down. Peter’s eyes fly wide open.

_I’d never trade your for anybody else, say_

Well. At least the freaking song changed. Finally.

“What’d I do.”

Tony doesn’t dignify that with a response.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> For anyone who wants the songs/videos that I'm talking about, here you go! Most of these songs can be blamed on Peter or Harley
> 
> Monster from Frozen the Musical (he’s envisioning the Untamed animatic for it that Peter became obsessed with and showed him)  
> Borderline by Nico Collins (via Harley)  
> I Believe I Can Fly by R. Kelly (no explination needed)  
> A Gay Disney Prince by Thomas Sanders (Both Peter and Harley, though Tony doesn't know it)  
> Setting Yourself Up For Sarcasm by Get Scared (Harley entirely)  
> Unwritten by Natash Bedingfield (Oddly enough, Pepper)  
> Brown Skin Girl by Beyonce, SAINt JHN, and Wizkid


End file.
